Together
by ainokitsune
Summary: Comment-fic. Prompt: Alcoholic!Dean, enabler!Cas-&-Sam, reality check.


_Written for the H/C comment-fic meme at hoodie_time on livejournal. Prompt: Alcoholic!Dean, enabler!Sam-n-Cas, reality check. See the meme for additional details.  
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**Together**

The church bells are a long way away, but Sam can still hear them from inside the room. It's Sunday morning, and Castiel's gone outside to collect Dean, bring him in out of the snow. Delicate flakes are still falling sporadically, and Sam sees the angel pause, briefly, on the front porch of the old house, and tilt his head slightly toward the distant ringing.

It takes a few minutes to get Dean back indoors, and his bare feet are seared pink by the cold. He stands on the coarse wood floor and brushes snow out of his hair with an expression of vague annoyance, and Sam's the one who winds up dragging him to the sofa and more or less forcing him to sit.

He's also the one who goes into the kitchen and rustles up the coffee and so he's halfway through the doorway back into the main room when he sees Castiel sloshing whiskey into a glass and sliding it across the dusty coffee table to his brother.

It's nine o'clock in the morning. Sam crosses the room and sets the coffee cup down carefully, and plucks the bottle from Castiel's hand with almost delicate precision. He looks at Dean, and Dean gives him a wan, helpless smile. Sam knows he's seen it before.

He goes and finds Dean's shoes and socks, and resists the urge to chuck them at his head. Just sets them down carefully and if there's a little edge to his voice when he tells his brother to get it together, well, Dean probably won't hear it. Because Sam's almost one hundred percent certain this isn't the first drink his brother's had today. It certainly won't be his last.

He takes the bottle outside and stands there on the front porch, not far from Cas' footprints in the light dusting of snow, and stares out over the white landscape broken here and there by tufts of dry grass. The sky is a blue vault, the clouds smeared low on the horizon like an artist's representation of mountains, in purple and gray.

He doesn't know what to do with the bottle. Thinks about pouring it out in the snow. Eventually he just takes it back inside, avoids catching the eyes of either the angel or his brother, and pours it all down the kitchen drain. Then he sets the bottle carefully on the counter. Runs the water until the smell is less pervasive. Not that anything will really wash it away.

He remembers evenings spent curled up on the sofa with his father, before Dean ripped the veil off his childhood world. Remembers the smell, how at the time it was homey, familiar. Welcome. In some ways it still is, still flips that little switch way in the back of his head that says, "This is home. This is safe." Warm arms and quiet nights and his father's low rumble as he worked his way through a complicated dusty book and half a bottle of whatever he'd picked up the day before. Sometimes he'd distractedly ruffle Sam's hair, or sneak a peek at whatever book Sam happened to be reading at the time.

When he goes to find Dean later, it's sort of the same. Dean's sitting at the bottom of the house's steep wooden staircase patiently stitching up a worn pair of jeans with a busted seam. He's freshly showered and scrubbed and got his shoes on, but there's still a tang in the air. Just on the very edge, as if it's clinging to the dark walls and the dry, roughened wood of the banister. It's Sam's jeans he's stitching, fingers deft and steady, eyes fixed in concentration.

"Where's Cas?" Sam manages to make his voice calm, almost indifferent. If Dean notices the edge Sam's trying his damnest to keep under wraps, he makes no sign. Just glances up, favors him with a brief, honest smile, and goes back to his chore.

"Flapped off on urgent business, same as always. Can't believe he stuck around this long."

"Yeah," Sam murmurs, and looks back at the living room, at the battered sofa and the glass still sitting on the table, empty and softly radiant in the late morning sun. It's probably got the angel's fingerprints on it. And Dean's.

And Sam's are all over the bottle in the kitchen.

He moves up the stair behind Dean, sits down quietly on the steps, close enough that the side of his leg bumps against his brother's thigh. Dean makes a little noise, a kind of hum, and nods slightly to himself. Maybe he doesn't realize he's done it. He certainly doesn't acknowledge Sam in any other way.

They stay like that for a while.

Around ten-thirty that night, Sam goes looking and he finds Dean on the kitchen floor.

Sam makes fists. Thinks about leaving him there. About maybe finding a blanket. About dumping a bucket of water over his head. About chucking him out into the cold.

Eventually he gets Dean situated on the couch. Then he goes through all their stuff and dumps out whatever alcohol he finds, and he rests his elbows on the kitchen counter and covers his face and digs his fingers into his scalp.

In the morning, Sam tells him again to get it together. Dean just clutches at his coffee, and shakes his head.

-end-


End file.
